Open Nelles site so Whittier public can see: Editorial

***STAFF FILE PHOTO***The entryway of the former Fred C. Nelles Youth Correctional Facility's historic administration building Jan. 26, 2012. The city is working on a plan to complete key redevelopment projects, including Nelles, despite the end of redevelopment funding. (SGVN/Staff photo Leo Jarzomb/SWCITY)

Plenty of Whittierites are old enough to remember a time when their parents could mock-threaten to send them to the Fred C. Nelles Youth Correctional Center on Whittier Boulevard if they didn’t behave.

Few kids actually saw the inside of the walls surrounding the sprawling 74-acre complex, as Mom and Dad didn’t really have the power to send them to the pokey.

But the irony is that even though the state-owned facility has been closed since June 2004, neither Whittier residents nor most any other Californian can get inside those walls to this day.

And being able to get inside to see the grounds is not just a matter of idle curiosity about what it looks like inside the former prison — “reform school” was the term of the day — that was home to thousands of wayward youth for the 113 years it was open beginning in 1891.

Now that the state of California has cut a deal to sell Nelles, in the heart of Whittier, to a company that wants to develop it for both housing and commercial use, it is crucial for concerned area residents to be able to know what is there in the first place.

But we can’t know what is there, because we can’t get in. Members of the editorial board have tried. Members of the preservationist community have tried. But with very few exceptions, the only way to see Nelles is to be a member of a film crew with the money to rent the property while it’s in escrow.

That’s just wrong, and the reason is that this isn’t an ordinary property. Nelles is a California State Historical Landmark. Citizens have a right to see the fascinating century-old places that earned Nelles this designation. And yet we can’t.

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We do know that there are eight separate buildings designated as historic on their own on the site. And we do know that developer Brookfield Homes has plans to tear down six of those buildings. But if we can’t see them, we can’t evaluate whether these places our state has said deserve landmark status should be maintained through adaptive reuse as the project goes forward.

And certainly, by the way, the project should go forward. There’s no point in continuing to keep the place locked up even tighter than it was as a prison in the way that it has been for a decade now. There are many attractive features to Brookfield’s mixed-use plans for stores, restaurants, single-family homes and apartments. Southern California and in particular the Whittier area needs all of those. It also needs to ensure such development is done appropriately; one good sign regarding open space in the plan so far is a commitment to a mile-long hiking and biking trail and a 4-acre park. There’s a question among residents about the developer’s commitment to senior housing, which is another pressing regional need. But citizens will have a chance to comment on the size and scope of the development in public hearings before the Whittier Planning Commission this summer and the City Council this fall.

Meanwhile, so we know what we’re talking about here, we the people need to see the gates opened up so we can get in and take a gander. Otherwise the secrecy — which seems to rival that favored by Whittier native son Richard Nixon, after whom one of the housing neighborhoods at Nelles will be named — raises far too many questions about what might be lost in the bargain.